Who We Are
President, Jewish Family Forever
Gary (Yehezkel) Schiff
Yehezkel (Gary Schiff) has been involved in protecting the traditional Jewish family for over 20 years. He became involved as a synagogue president when the umbrella organization decided to ordain clergy who were openly leading a gay lifestyle. His tag line was, “If the Torah is wrong about this and that what else is it wrong about?” He has written about the issue in JNS, Times of Israel and the American Thinker. He has developed videos with Rabbi Breitowitz with the goal of strengthening the traditional family. He has been an active supporter of the traditional family in both the US and Israel’s legislatures. He heads Jewish Family Forever, an organization dedicated to protecting the traditional Jewish Family.
Clinical and Education Consultant
Koby Frances, Ph.D.
Dr. Koby Frances is a clinical psychologist in private practice with
over 15 years of experience working with a broad array of issues
in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Dr. Frances has developed a clinical specialization in
issues of sexual desire, including unwanted attractions, compulsive behavior, heterosexual relationship issues and sexual identity confusion, which he regularly writes and presents on. Through his work, he has identified the role of misinformation and
ignorance in creating unnecessary confusion and distress in Jewish individuals and families. Sadly, this very misinformation was aggressively taking people away from their own Jewish identity, family and community.
Recognizing a broader community need for education, Dr. Frances co-founded Jewish Family Forever with Yechezkel Schiff, a knowledge-based community organization designed to bring core Torah truths to light while preventing the kind of unnecessary suffering and spiritual alienation that he was seeing on a daily basis in his practice.
Since its founding in 2023, Dr. Frances has given several highly acclaimed community-wide virtual presentations for hundreds of psychotherapists, Rabbis, community leaders, Kallah teachers and parents, all of which were highly acclaimed. (See testimonials and references section.). As Clinical Director of JFF, he is dedicated to disseminating Torah and scientifically accurate information to the Jewish community and more broadly.
Dr. Frances has identified significant clinical shortcomings in mental health organizations worldwide, shortcomings that he is determined to comprehensively address. In Dr. Frances own words:
“What we are seeing with the gay identity, is similar to what mental health providers have been seeing for decades with other popular labels like ADHD, OCD or Borderline Personality, where people self-diagnose based on hunches or based on their most visible patterns. Since it feels good to have a name for one’s patterns, this leads them to unnecessarily take-on these terms along with the treatment regiments and lifestyles that these terms go along with, which can often make their initial problem much worse.
“And similar to these other popular labels, with the gay label, people can adopt a kind of “identity of sickness” and victimhood and become emotionally and socially attached to the gay label and the social rewards of coming out. They are led to believe that “they are their diagnosis” making it difficult for them to be curious about a different name or theory for their patterns, which could be much more accurate, empowering and Jewishly compatible.
“In my experience there are a wide variety of issues that could easily mask as “gay”,
which all have easy to implement, common-sense solutions. Mental-health
organizations are not teaching therapists about those issues confused with a gay
identity, just as they typically do with other popular labels. So it is now our responsibility
to teach this to ourselves and to the broader world.”
In Dr. Frances’ private practice, he continues to be a widely sought-out therapist for
issues of unwanted sexual attraction, heterosexual difficulty and sexual identity
confusion. Dr. Frances is a psychodynamically trained clinician and has advanced post-graduate training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Level 2), a comprehensive approach to working with complex developmental trauma and the ingrained behavioral-cognitive-emotional patterns that are often the result of such trauma.
Rabbinic Advisor
Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz
Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz is a senior lecturer at Yeshivas Ohr Somayach and Rav of Kehillas Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem. Until his family’s aliyah in April 2010, he was the Rabbi of the Woodside Synagogue in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Law School. He received his rabbinic ordination from the Ner Israel Rabbinical College; his BA from the Johns Hopkins University: and a JD from Harvard Law School(magna cum laude). He has written and lectured extensively in the US and Israel on the interface of halacha and contemporary society with a special interest and expertise in medical, family, business, and legal ethics. Many of his classes can be found on YouTube, Torah Anytime, Yiboneh, OU, and Ohr Somayach.
